Support Facilities

 

Computer and NMR Facilities

The department maintains a state of the art Computer Facility with two SGI Octane Computers, two SGI Indigo II computers and two HP 7200 - Series Computers. The director of the facility oversees the installation and maintenance of hardware and software and assists users with any inquiries that they might have. Department members also use the central UIC computer facility, which supports scientific somputing. Individual laboratories can also gain direct access to higher performance computers at the National Supercomputing Centers (NCSA)
Please see the computer facility site for more information, or contact Don Rippon for more information.

The NMR Facility has six high-field NMR spectrometers, including a three-channel Bruker DRX 500 and a Bruker DPX 400, each with field gradient capabilities. These are maintained by the director of the NMR facility. The facility also supports solid-state NMR experiments. In addition, campuswide NMR resources include a four-channel 600 MHz Bruker DRX spectrometer.
Please see the NMR Facilities site or contact Dan McElheny for more information.

Shop Facilities and the UIC Research Resource Center

The Department of Chemistry runs a fully equipped Machine Shop staffed with skilled instrument makers. This staff builds research equipment that is not commercially available.
The department also has an Electronics Shop which can design digital and analog equipment and work with students who wish to develop electronics skills.
In addition, there is the Glass Shop which can build non-commercially available research glassware.
Please see the staff and faculty page for more information about the shops.

The university is continually modernizing the Research Resource Center (RRC) in the building that houses the Department of Chemistry. Currently, the RRC contains two electron microscopes, including an atomic resolution JEOL 2010F FE scanning tunneling microscope, a Kratos MS50 mass spectrometer, Kratos Concept mass spectrometer, Extrel GC-MS mass spectrometer, a Finnegan LC-electrospray-MS-MS mass spectrometer, A Renishaw raman microscope/spectrometer, and an Enraf Nonius CAD-4 diffractometer for determining small-molecule, single-crystal X-ray structures.
For more information about the RRC, please visit the Research Resources Center site.

The university's Microfabrication Applications Laboratory (MAL) is dedicated to providing integrated ciruit, fiber optic, and microfluidics technology to numerous departments within UIC. MAL has equipment for photolithography, thin film deposition and etching, sample characterization, dicing and lead attachment, and computer aided design.
For more information about MAL, please see the Microfabrication Applications Laboratory site.

Major Research Equipment

The department maintains shared-use facilities equipped with FT-IR (Mattson), UV-Vis-near IR (Cary 17 and OLIS-Cary 14), circular dichroism (Jasco 600), and fluorescence (steady-state and time-dependent, SLM-Aminco) spectrometers. A polarimeter Uasco) and a high-resolution Raman system including a microscope (J-Y Raman) are also shared. Our biochemical facilities include a scintillation counter, microbial and tissue culture facilities, incubators, three ultracentrifuges, several standard centrifuges, darkroom facilities, and photochemical reactors. The department also has a high-pressure laboratory.

Much of the department's equipment is localized in specialized laboratories operated by individual research groups.

The Dynamic Light- Scattering Laboratory has Ar ion and He-Ne lasers and photon-counting instrumentation used for measuring translation diffusion coefficients and for monitoring internal fluctuations of macromolecules.

The Surface Physical and Analytical Chemistry Laboratories are equipped to carry out experiments in low-energy electron diffraction, scanning Auger electron spectroscopy, monochromatic X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, dynamic secondary ion mass spectrometry, two-laser ion-trap mass spectrometry, and mass resolved thermal desorption. More specialized instruments include an ultra-high vacuum scanning tunneling microscope, surface infrared spectrometers, an electrospray ion surface scattering apparatus, and a molecular ion beam surface modification apparatus.

The Synthetic Inorganic and Bio-Inorganic Chemistry Laboratories are equipped with radio-frequency generators, metal atom reactors, vacuum lines, and glove boxes. Multiple Schlenk lines and Schlenk ware are available for routine synthesis. The laboratories also have Hewlett Packard diode-array and Shimadzu UV/Vis spectrometers, a BIO-RAD FT-1111 a Nonius CAD4 X-ray diffractometer, a PAR electrochemistry system with a potentiostat/galvanostat, a SP8800 ternary HPLC system, and a Waters Advanced Protein Purification System.

The Laboratory for the Investigation of Protein Structure and Function has equipment for gene manipulation, DNA sequencing, and protein expression, including a FPLC system. Absorption and fluorescence spectrometers with stopped-flow capability, a computer- controlled pH stat instrument, a Langmuir Blodgett surface film balance, and a tensiometer equipped with an epifluorescence microscope are used to investigate protein function. A Silicon Graphics workstation is used for modeling protein structures.

The Laser Laboratory is equipped to perform spectroscopy, kinetics, and gas phase dynamics experiments. The laboratory contains three molecular beam machines, each equipped with time-of-flight mass spectrometers, two excimer lasers, three YAG lasers, six dye lasers, and a vacuum UV monochromator.

The Fluorescence Microscopy Facility features an anchored cell cytometer, consisting of an inverted Nikon epifluorescence microscope interfaced to a photomultiplier tube and a cooled CCD camera, allowing real-time measurement of intracellular pH, oxidant production, thiol levels, and calcium ion concentrations.

The Molecular Spectroscopy Laboratory has a specially constructed absorption CD-MCD, UV-visible-IR spectrometer with polarization modulation, a molecular beam-based, two-photon apparatus with a YAG-pumped dye laser, an FT-IR modified for circular dichroism and Zeeman experiments with a superconducting magnet, and a multichannel Raman spectrometer -capable of measuring polarization -modulated Raman optical activity.

The Nucleotide Structure Laboratory is equipped to probe nucleotide electronic properties in the gas phase and in solution. The laboratory contains He I photoelec tron, condensed-phase photoionization, dual-scanning steady-state fluorescence and fluorescence lifetime spectrometers, a DNA synthesizer, a computer- controlled Waters 650 HPLC with array detection for nucleotide isolation, and workstations linked to national supercomputer centers.